As the Supreme Court readies itself to strike down Roe v. Wade many states are about to pass strict abortion laws, including my state Missouri which would prevent even medically necessary abortions illegal.
In the US roughly 110,000 pregnancies a year are ectopic… Ectopic pregnancies are dangerous for mother and fetus. As the fetus grows in the fallopian tube, the tube not designed for growing fetuses expands until it ruptures. The rupture of a fallopian tube is a medical surgical emergency. Side effects of an ecoptopic pregnancy include infertility and death for the mother. Even before the Roe v. Wade most ectopic pregnancies were ended by doctors. In a number of states that will no longer be allowed. Doctors who perform them can go to jail.
Many years ago, I was told not to get pregnant because I wouldn’t survive it, due to a blood disorder. Now, I’ve added “getting pregnant will be even worse because a caesarean section is not an option should you need one and giving birth with the nerves of your groin, hyperactive as they are will cause extreme pain.” Now if I get pregnant, a terrifying thought… I will not have the option to end the pregnancy even though the doctors do not think I will survive it.
So if my birth control fails, I will become an incubator for an unwanted child. I married my husband because he wasn’t interested/didn’t want kids and neither did I. As of June, if birth control fails…. Chances are good I’ll die and leave my husband with an unwanted child, so that’s exciting. And with my neurological disease, sterilization of me is not an option.
Before the 1960s and 1970s pregnancy was the number one killer of women in the US. I expect that to be the case again in the next few years, because even though medicine has progressed, it hasn’t progressed enough to prevent all blood clots or save most women who have ectopic pregnancies. Thankfully, not all states are passing this stupid abortion bans, so women in states like Washington, California, New York, etc have better survival chances than those in states like Missouri and Oklahoma. Also those states have said they will not be banning abortion just because Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
Which brings me to another point, Missouri is adding in that women who travel out of state for an abortion, even if it’s medically necessary can be arrested and doctors must report if their patients terminate their pregnancies. This means my OB/GYN is now a spy for the government as well as being forced to watch me die if I get pregnant. I wonder how long OB/GYNs will stay open in Missouri? How long before the stress of their new jobs force them out of women’s health and into something else or before they flee the state.
These draconian laws, turn women into nothing more than disposable incubators for the next generation of children.
Someone sent me a tweet recently proclaiming that with the number of people who are pro-choice, the statistics of abortions performed must be wrong because all those pro-choicers would have had multiple abortions. What? That’s beyond ridiculous. Being pro-choice doesn’t mean the people are out intentionally getting pregnant a dozen times a year just so they can have abortions. Thanks to modern day birth control, most of those pro-choicers will never have an abortion and many do want children of their own. I do not, and I didn’t even before I was told not to get pregnant because of an issue with my blood or the reiteration of the sentiment when I developed CRPS spread to my hip/groin nerves. It really is about having the choice.
It is much better to return women to the status of disposable incubators for unwanted children, most of whom will enter the already overburdened foster care system.
Hadena James 